E-Cig Crazies Of The Week

I'm currently overwhelmed at Puddlecote Inc with renegotiating current contracts and compiling bids for promising new business from two hefty potential suppliers. All this while also haggling over cost per square foot of new larger premises we are hoping to move into soon, getting quotes for shifting our whole operation in a weekend, and talking to businesses interested in renting our current freehold (the potential new business and the need for extra space are somewhat linked). As such, content here may well be sparse (as you may have already noticed).

To round off the week though, in the last few days I've noticed some desperate excuses from "experts" as to why e-cigs should be banned/taxed and what have you. Last weekend, we had some vacuous 1920s throwback on Sky News debating - if that's what you can call it - the merits or otherwise of vaping, with Clive Bates, and seriously thinking she had a decent argument with this.

Woman on @SkyNews says #Ecigs are a 'fad' which will die out soon - where do they find these loopy "experts"?!?
— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) October 25, 2014

OK, perhaps I'm being unfair. That wasn't her main argument, which was that e-cigs are just too cumbersome to take out with you so why not just discard them. Far more compelling, obviously.

Then, via Nicotine Science and Policy's daily news digest (which you really should sign up to, by the way), came this unutterable nonsense from some halfwit ... in the Indian government!

In his clearest message yet on the controversy over the safety of ENDS, health minister Harsh Vardhan ruled out their acceptability in the light of research findings by experts which have held that they are no less unsafe than the “real thing”, said a government statement. 

The minister, who was addressing global tobacco control experts at the 45th Union World Conference on Lung Health in Barcelona, Spain, said e-cigarettes and similar products push children towards the tobacco habit eventually via nicotine dependence.

India is truly screwed if it is run by people who can spout such truth-free cockwaffle as that.

But air-headed morons of the week must surely be the two "editorial writers" - that is, not amateur hour cud-chewing hicks clumping a keyboard, but the cream - at the Arizona Republic news service.

VALDEZ: For consistency, it makes sense to tax e-cigarettes. Smokers who really want to quit aren't going to be put off by a tax on e-cigarettes; they are already paying a tax on their expensive habit.

Splutter. Err, we should tax e-cigs because people who vape instead of smoke are accustomed to the taxes ... so they'll barely notice it? This, surely, is the worst anti-ecig excuse ever invented. Surely?

VALDEZ: But this is less about "bad" or "better" vices — or nanny governments. It's about consistency. It's also about a few sane voices in state government who are willing to face the fact we need more revenue to run schools, etc.

And in any case, who cares! It's all good because it means more private cash is ripped away by the state for no reason whatsoever except that they can. That's what the "sane" people say, apparently.

Fortunately (or not, as the case may be), opposition was on hand to {cough} sagely nail her absurd points to the wall.

MACEACHERN: The objections to them are less science-based than they are psychological: People see someone "smoking" an e-cig indoors and they instinctively see tobacco cigarettes. As an actual vice they are no more dangerous to bystanders than someone drinking a diet soda. Yet we don't advocate big tax increases on soda pop.

Christ on a Tomahawk! Do these people not read the news?